Publisher speculates about Amazon/Google e-book “duopoly”

Speaking at Princeton on Thursday, Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the …

Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the Association of American Publishers, speculated last week that the landmark Google Book Search settlement could create a duopoly in the electronic books market. Speaking at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy, Sarnoff noted that Amazon currently dominates the market for downloadable e-books. He said that the settlement "forces Google to become a provider of electronic books with a different business model" in direct competition with Amazon. And he said that some aspects of the massive settlement would be "difficult to replicate" for Google's competitors.

Sarnoff said the publishers he represents didn't set out to create a monopoly in the markets for book search engines or online book sales. But he didn't deny that the settlement could have that effect. After all, he noted, "copyright itself is a monopoly."

Sarnoff also speculated that what competition does occur will "emerge thematically." That is, rather than building another comprehensive book search engine, competitors will offer niche search engines tilted toward particular industries, such as medicine. Legal hurdles may make it infeasible for any other firms to build a search engine comparable to Google Book Search.

A blueprint for 21st century book publishing

Sarnoff outlined the terms of the settlement, which is expected to be approved by the courts later this year. It reads like a blueprint for the future of electronic book publishing, covering topics as wide-ranging as advertising, library access, and the treatment of orphan works. A key element of the agreement is the creation of a Book Rights Registry that will collect payments from Google and distribute them to authors and publishers. Sarnoff said the publishers pressed for the creation of this registry in part because it would be too "easy to disintermediate the publisher over time" if Google paid authors directly. Sarnoff said that the structure of the registry will be "tough to replicate for [Google's] competitors."

Google made significant concessions to get the agreement. First, Google agreed to pay $60 for every scanned book whose rights-holders could be identified. In addition, rights-holders will have the power to decide whether to allow ads to appear alongside their books on Google's site, and will be entitled to advertising revenue if they choose to allow advertising. Finally, Google will help pay the plaintiffs' legal bills.

The agreement will create another important new revenue stream for authors and publishers: library subscriptions. Libraries will be able to pay fees to Google for access to the complete library of books in Google's catalog, and Google will pass most of those revenues along to publishers. Finally, the agreement has a provision that would provide free access to a limited number of terminals in public libraries for patrons who couldn't otherwise afford to buy e-books from Google.

No "transfer of files"

This might provoke a feeling of d�j� vu among those readers who signed up for Google's ill-fated online video store a few years ago. The new Google book store, like Google's earlier video store, will require users to log into their Google accounts in order to access the works they have purchased.

The agreement sets Google up as an e-book vendor, and Sarnoff said that measures would be taken to discourage the illicit sale of books purchased using Google's online store. Under the system he described, electronic books purchased from Google "will not be resident on your computer." Instead, the books will be stored on the Google "cloud," and users will access the books they have purchased a few pages at a time using a Web-based viewer. Apparently drawing a distinction between transient caching and permanent storage, Sarnoff said that the system Google has agreed to implement won't "involve the transfer of files."

This might provoke a feeling of d�j� vu among those readers who signed up for Google's ill-fated online video store a few years ago. The new Google book store, like Google's earlier video store, will require users to log into their Google accounts in order to access the works they have purchased. Users who want to read their e-books on their laptops while they are out of range of an access point will be out of luck. Finally, Sarnoff said that users' ownership of a book will continue only "as long as Google exists." If Google ever decided to stop supporting the online book service, as it did with its video service, users would be cut off from access to their books.

It's a bit of a puzzle what this DRM-like scheme is supposed to accomplish. Under the system Sarnoff described, it would be trivial to write a FireFox plugin to automatically page through a book, download individual pages, and stitch them together into a PDF. So although it will inconvenience legitimate users who want to read their lawfully purchased books without an Internet connection, we're willing to bet that it won't make a dent in book piracy.

18 Reader Comments

Very unfortunate. The DRM schemes these two entities are playing with is more restrictive than thsoe that have been slowly fostered in the tech community (such as mobipocket, and (more) open platform readers such as Ectaco and iLiad).

WE (the consumer) are going to lose rights (again) at the expense of the corporate power grabs. I love the fact that Amazon provides me with a space to buy anything I want at any time. But if if it starts restricting the type of products I have available to me, then it stops being a good thing. Kindle looks cool, but it needs to drop some of the over the top DRM employed currently.

Its too bad, but we will see those other formats that give us flexibility die (perhaps slowly) because of this.

So, if I understand this right the publishers saw the future coming and moved quickly to make sure that they get a large cut of the author's money because otherwise they realized that they would be pretty much useless.

What a load of crap. This is just another example of an outdated business model being shoved down people's throats by an incumbent "monopoly" of business for no sake other than that business's continued existence.

Is this really what was intended of our copyright laws? No. Copyright was never meant to create artificial means of propping up business's who create nothing.

This is just another example of the abuse of our copyright laws at the hands of big media and their lackeys in our government.

What a load of crap.

Oh, and rest assured that I will never buy a book from Google. "Can't download the book." What load of shit. This is essentially renting books. Give me an f'ing break.

Sarnoff said the publishers pressed for the creation of this registry in part because it would be too "easy to disintermediate the publisher over time" if Google paid authors directly.

Wow. Truly the copyright is serving it's function. No wonder most people ignore the crap out of it and pirate it. It has lost any semblance of the original idea behind it. Time to remove the whole thing. Society's best should be the goal not making publishers rich.

While I thought the entire lawsuit was bullshit, I can't really find trouble with the outcome. It doesn't change anything for newly published books. Those that are no longer printed will be widely available. As long as the price is reasonable, thats a win. The number of these old books that people end up actually paying to see will be quite small, so its not like Google or Amazon are going to make a fortune from it.

Keep in mind that many former music industry workers have jumped ship to publishing. They want to setup a system where they can gouge both the author and consumer like they did in the music industry. They know the key to that is to limit and fight internet distribution to keep up artificial scarcity.

Sarnoff said the publishers pressed for the creation of this registry in part because it would be too "easy to disintermediate the publisher over time" if Google paid authors directly.

Wow. Truly the copyright is serving it's function. No wonder most people ignore the crap out of it and pirate it. It has lost any semblance of the original idea behind it. Time to remove the whole thing. Society's best should be the goal not making publishers rich.

You got some numbers on how most people 'ignore the crap out of' copyright laws?

Originally posted by Banzai51:Keep in mind that many former music industry workers have jumped ship to publishing. They want to setup a system where they can gouge both the author and consumer like they did in the music industry. They know the key to that is to limit and fight internet distribution to keep up artificial scarcity.

Or one could go with what's behind door number two and stick with dead-trees. Nothing artificial about them and (Analog)RM comes standard. Plus technology (consumer level) hasn't caught up to the "click and distribute" that other content suffers from.

We do indeed want to "disintermediate" the publishers! Similar to bands selling music directly. Publishers are going to become extinct or at least less influential. An author with an editor doesn't need a publisher to offer his book for sale.

We do indeed want to "disintermediate" the publishers! Similar to bands selling music directly. Publishers are going to become extinct or at least less influential. An author with an editor doesn't need a publisher to offer his book for sale.

The intent here is to push competitors out of the way before they can get a foothold. A good example is Fictionwise. They already are providing a method for authors to publish directly with them and skip the publisher. Many author's have had pretty decent success here too. The shame is that the Amazon format will push Fictionwise out the door. Services such as theirs depend on a minimum number of eyeballs on their site to keep the doors open and pay the overhead. Amazon will probably push their heads underwater.

A good example is Fictionwise. They already are providing a method for authors to publish directly with them and skip the publisher.

Question: what's the difference between Fictionwise and a publisher? Aren't they serving the same purpose? Looking at their page for authors, they only accept authors who can prove they have books in print with other publishers, but who retain the electronic rights to their own works. Seems to me they're pretty dependent on recycling the editing work that the original publisher already did. And they demand exclusive distribution rights of the works. So much for sticking it to the man.

quote:

Keep in mind that many former music industry workers have jumped ship to publishing.

I don't see this duopoly happening. The settlement agreement is quite specific about how the book must be registered/published prior to January 5, 2009 to be covered under the protections afforded by the class action settlement. Unless one assumes that the pull of prior scans will force publishers into the Google Books Partners Program -- and that pull approaches the Partners Program to the exclusion of other distribution channels -- Google will not have a monopolistic or dualistic impact on the marketplace.

Sarnoff said the publishers pressed for the creation of this registry in part because it would be too "easy to disintermediate the publisher over time" if Google paid authors directly.

Wow. Truly the copyright is serving it's function. No wonder most people ignore the crap out of it and pirate it. It has lost any semblance of the original idea behind it. Time to remove the whole thing. Society's best should be the goal not making publishers rich.

You got some numbers on how most people 'ignore the crap out of' copyright laws?

I would say that around here pirating is fairly good indication of it. People are just tired of the whole one sided deal. Sure mostly younger people pirate but that is mainly a function of knowing how to. Older do it as well if you show them how since many seem to dislike the whole pay for zero rights approach the industry has.

Sarnoff said the publishers pressed for the creation of this registry in part because it would be too "easy to disintermediate the publisher over time" if Google paid authors directly.

Wow. Truly the copyright is serving it's function. No wonder most people ignore the crap out of it and pirate it. It has lost any semblance of the original idea behind it. Time to remove the whole thing. Society's best should be the goal not making publishers rich.

You got some numbers on how most people 'ignore the crap out of' copyright laws?

I would say that around here pirating is fairly good indication of it. People are just tired of the whole one sided deal. Sure mostly younger people pirate but that is mainly a function of knowing how to. Older do it as well if you show them how since many seem to dislike the whole pay for zero rights approach the industry has.

Thanks for the info; I was wondering if anyone had real numbers on copyright infringement and/or piracy. It doesn't look like they're available, even if they exist.

I would say that around here pirating is fairly good indication of it. People are just tired of the whole one sided deal. Sure mostly younger people pirate but that is mainly a function of knowing how to. Older do it as well if you show them how since many seem to dislike the whole pay for zero rights approach the industry has.

Are people really tired of the one-sided deal, and pirating as a way to make an important statement for freedom? Or do they just like getting stuff for free?

Sarnoff said the publishers pressed for the creation of this registry in part because it would be too "easy to disintermediate the publisher over time" if Google paid authors directly.

Wow. Truly the copyright is serving it's function. No wonder most people ignore the crap out of it and pirate it. It has lost any semblance of the original idea behind it. Time to remove the whole thing. Society's best should be the goal not making publishers rich.

You got some numbers on how most people 'ignore the crap out of' copyright laws?

I would say that around here pirating is fairly good indication of it. People are just tired of the whole one sided deal. Sure mostly younger people pirate but that is mainly a function of knowing how to. Older do it as well if you show them how since many seem to dislike the whole pay for zero rights approach the industry has.

Thanks for the info; I was wondering if anyone had real numbers on copyright infringement and/or piracy. It doesn't look like they're available, even if they exist.

I would be very surprised if there are any worldwide objective numbers. There are few academic studies done but they have looked at certain markets only IIRC.

I would say that around here pirating is fairly good indication of it. People are just tired of the whole one sided deal. Sure mostly younger people pirate but that is mainly a function of knowing how to. Older do it as well if you show them how since many seem to dislike the whole pay for zero rights approach the industry has.

Are people really tired of the one-sided deal, and pirating as a way to make an important statement for freedom? Or do they just like getting stuff for free?

When companies don't honour their part of the deal (time limited monopoly in exchange for more creating and enriching the public domain) than is it so far fetched that people say screw you than we are not honouring our part either. After all the copyright is limiting the ownership rights and they have far stronger logical and ethic backing. So if you expect the people to give up part of their ownership rights you have to provide something in return. If not than sooner or later people are going to decide that copyright is wrong and in the end the laws are written to reflect the societies thinking (democracy and all that).

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.